My husband is a funny and quirky guy at times. First of all, he cannot stand irritating pests such as fruit flies that swarm around certain foods in the kitchen, or ants that crawl around in the kitchen or house, or moths that keep flying around his head or mosquitos that keep buzzing in his ears or flies that seem to gather in the house during certain times of the year. As a result, he has been known to pull out the flyswatter in the middle of entertaining guests at our house and just kill about 20 flies while our guests are trying to have a serious conversation with us. He has also actively stomped on ants during the middle of Bible study as they were driving him crazy. Tonight he stopped the movie we were watching to demolish the moth that would not leave us alone. Often times I'll hear the can of “Raid” being sprayed incessantly in the kitchen as he just cannot handle the fruit flies or ants any longer. Just last week I had saved the seeds from the butternut squash, washed them and was getting ready to roast them dry. But the fruit flies were swarming around the seeds so badly that Mat couldn't take it anymore so he threw out the seeds!
Other quirky things about my husband is he likes to try to take the dogs places. Sometimes he'll take Turbo on car rides and he desperately wants to take Turbo out camping with him, though he may face the risk that an animal may attack Turbo. We went to a church picnic this past weekend and Mat insisted on bringing two of our dogs. At one point he strapped Calvin into the backpack and had one leash in each hand asking if anyone wanted to go for a walk with him. There were no takers and Mat looked so hilariously out of place in this African environment and yet so desperate for someone to join him that finally another male consented!
Mat insists that Microsoft is terrible and Linux is awesome. He is constantly trying to convert people to Linux and installs Linux programs onto people's computers here.
Mat always has to be doing something so during meetings he'll be messing around on his computer or while I'm trying to have a serious conversation, he'll be clipping his nails or messing with something.
Mat gets funny ideas in his head and makes elaborate plans of things he wants to do. Someimes he accomplishes these things, but other times he doesn't. He wants to learn how to make his own wine. He collected the marula fruit (an indigenous fruit) that was in our yard and was determined to learn how to make marula wine. However, the marulas rotted faster than he could get to them. Mat also wants to make his own beer and often speaks of his desire to learn how to do it. Mat makes butter from cream that has “gone off” and insists on making ice cream from dairy here as well. This weekend he decided that the fruit trees in our garden had been neglected so he needed to learn how to prune them. Someone came over this weekend to show him how and so Sunday night and Monday morning, Mat has been actively pruning the fruit trees in our garden. Mat wants to learn how to make a compost and a “compost tea” as well. He is all about mixing his own bug spray to spray the house instead of calling the pesticide companies. Mat decided he wanted to make a drying rack so we could have freshly dried fruit. He bought the materials for it, but has still yet to complete the project.
Despite all of Mat's quirky and funny things that he does, I still love and enjoy him.